Obama Sends Special Forces to Syria
President Obama announced that he will send 50 Special Operations troops into Syria to help fight the group known as the Islamic State (IS). This small-scale deployment is a notable policy shift for President Obama, who has repeatedly insisted that the U.S. will not deploy ground troops in Syria. The change comes on the heels of Russia’s military intervention in support of the government forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Russia has bombed against opposition forces, some of which are supported by the U.S. Washington has criticized Russia’s campaign, arguing that it will only fuel more extremism within the country.
On Oct. 27, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter testified before the Senate Armed Service Committee and introduced a new approach for countering IS in Syria. While the old approach focused on training and equipping new forces outside of Syria before bringing them into the fight, the new approach involves working with vetted leaders of rebel groups that are already engaged in fighting IS. The U.S. will provide equipment and training to these local groups to bolster their efforts and is hoping that this new approach will enjoy much wider success than the previous $500 million program that Pentagon has discontinued.
Carter stressed that the United States “won’t hold back from supporting capable partners in opportunistic attacks against [IS], or conducting such missions directly, whether by strikes from the air or direct action on the ground.”
The newly proposed Special Operations forces will work with moderate Syrian Arab rebels and Kurdish groups, such as the People’s Protection Units (YPG) who have experienced recent victories against the Islamic militants. The goal is to prepare these groups to mount a military offensive on Raqqa, IS’s de facto capital in Syria. They will seek to cut the city off from Mosul, the group’s stronghold in Iraq. A successful campaign by U.S.-backed fighters against IS in Raqqa would mark a significant setback for the group.
“The responsibility that [the special forces] have is not to lead the charge to take a hill, but rather to offer advice and assistance to those local forces about the best way they can organize their efforts to take the fight to [IS] or to take the hill inside of Syria,” reiterated White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest.
Although Pentagon officials have said that U.S. Special Operations Forces will not directly engage in combat with IS in the foreseeable future, some critics fear that this decision may lead to an escalation of the military role in the fight. Earnest also noted that the new mission in Syria is open ended and did not rule out the possibility of sending additional special forces troops into Iraq in the future.
The news of this decision came as Secretary of State John Kerry was engaged in peace talks regarding Syria in Vienna. Kerry has insisted that the timing of this announcement is merely coincidence and will not affect negotiations, which includes talks with foreign ministers of Russia and Iran, which support Assad, as well as countries which view Assad as having no place in the future of Syria.